Recruitment

Tina Lewis, the National Trust’s People & Legal Director, once said: “The National Trust is striving to be an employer of choice.” But if the National Trust was going to recruit for this project, we were going to have to do so differently.

One of the reasons people in the target groups were under-represented in the heritage industry was because the selection and recruitment processes created a barrier for them. Roles usually require past knowledge, experience, skills and qualifications.

In the Passport to your Future project we tried to open doors, for example by delivering a selection criteria and recruitment processes which does not create barriers.

In order to welcome those who have been faced with barriers to working in the heritage industry we needed to measure their potential and the value that the National Trust could add by giving people this opportunity.

So it wasn’t about looking at their present knowledge, experience, skills and qualifications – more looking at people’s past experience and the issues which had prevented them from excelling.

We needed a selection criteria and recruitment processes which measured where people were at and the value that the National Trust could add; how could they flourish and excel in this environment?

It was about reaching the people who usually fall through the usual means of measuring. This was a different game with, different rules.

When we set up the recruitment processes for Passport to your Future, we thought this through.

With these principles behind us, we felt we may be able to reach out and truly break down the barriers to accessibility, increase diversity and work towards our core purpose of ‘Looking after special places, forever, for everyone’.

‘The desire to recruit from adiverse pool is reflected inevery aspect of the process:terminology, language andtone, the focus on the benefitthe scheme will offer toindividuals and the approachto removing barriers from thewhole process.’